This guy, he only thinks in one direction, and that is the direction of more hedonism, most governmental control, more assaults on liberty, and more evil. Jill Stanek notes that pro-aborts are crowing that this “compromise,” which requires ALL insurance plans in the US to cover contraceptives “for free,” is actually more comprehensive than the original contraception mandate. This guy didn’t compromise, he just doubled down:

NARAL and Planned Parenthood have joined RH Reality Check to enthusiastically support President Obama’sjust announced “accommodation.”

The reason? Whereas before at least churches were exempted from providing insurance coverage for contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization, now even church insurance policies will have to cover them. As RH Reality states, “Under this plan, every insurance company will be obligated to provide contraceptive coverage.”

Read details here of Obama’s tweaked plan, but note the verbiage in the tweets below.

More evidence. I can’t believe how evil this guy is. Do note, that a number of religious orders have formed their own insurance companies to keep costs under control. For example, the Christian Brothers religious order have an insurance plan, as do the Carmelites and other a number of others. But now, they will have to buy contraception, which they wouldn’t have had to do before under the previous egregious “mandate.”

UPDATE: Well, this post seems to have attracted the attention of the Organizing For American (OFA) minions. Organizing For America is Obama’s “campaign” apparatus which he kept in place even after being elected. They literally pay people to scan blogs and news sites and jump on items critical of the President. Whether the commenters are part of OFA or not, the tactics are the same. Any strong critic of the President must be racist, because his supporters, who view him as some kind of secular leftist messiah, cannot understand how the greatest man in the history of ever can be criticized in any way. I would guess that photo has some kind of tag, because I’ve been criticizing Obama since this blog started and have never gotten pounced on by the OFA types.

In choosing the photo, I was looking for something that would reflect the terror and evil of this subjection of the Church, for this entire mandate is directed primarily at the Catholic Church, formulated by apostate catholycs who have developed an almost pathological antipathy towards the Church. I found many photoshops of Obama as the devil, but thought they were either too frightening for any kids who might happen along, and also were just off – wrong as he is, as evil as his policies often are, he’s not the devil. But I felt that Obama really is attempting to terrorize the Church into submission with this mandate, as he has done on other fronts. So, when I found a photoshop of Obama with arch-terrorist Osama Bin Laden, it seemed to fit. I also thought the pic, an obvious photoshop (give me a break, anyone taking that seriously needs their head examined), was somewhat humorous.

But I appreciate the commenters for reinforcing for us just what you think. “Dissent,” such a golden word with the previous president, is now entirely forbidden. If you criticize him harshly, we’ll call you racist, or some other term to destroy your credibility and ability to participate in the national debate – possibly even ruining your ability to work and provide for your family. If you defend traditional morality and the rights of religion (especially, the Church), you must be an extremist freak with serious psychological problems. All the sacred shibolleths of the left are discredited – simply look to Europe to see where their preferred policy prescriptions will lead – and so their only alternative is to try to discredit and destroy the opposition.

Numerous opponents of Obama have been the victim of the marxist (yes, I know quite precisely exactly what marxists are, what they do, and Obama definitely leans strongly in that direction), Alinsky-ite policies of personal destruction – pick the target, freeze it, frame it, and destroy it. I note in passing that Obama built his first electoral coalition serving as a “community organizer” for a socialist Alinsky-ite group.

It seems there is already strong interest in Michael Voris’ talk at the Frontiers of Flight Museum, which, by the way, is at Love Field in Dallas, on Lemmon Avenue [directions]. Tickets will be sold at the door. We’ll have some people there to grant admittance after you pays your money. I don’t have a facility to pay for tickets in advance, unfortunately, but hopefully, with the tickets being rather reasonable, that won’t be a problem. The talk is from 3-5 pm on Sunday, March 4. The facility seats 250. To get a read on attendance, please fill out the following poll. I’ll try to keep this post near the top so people can “register” to attend.

If attendance is strong, and we look like we’re going to have a full house, I will drop the ticket prices to something like $3 for individuals and $6-7 for a family. The only reason I’m charging anything is to cover the price of the facility and some other ancillary expenses.

To whet your appetite, here is one of the Vortex series on feminism and its extremely harmful effects on the Church:

Sorry for the uncharitability, but as Obama tries to pull a bait and switch on Catholics (please, bishops, don’t be fooled!), guess which well known religious is there, panting, hopping around in circles, pulling at her leash, bursting with energy to fetch the newspaper go to work for her master!?! (I’m sorry, this was really beneath my low standards, but I couldn’t resist) That’s right! This blog’s f-a-v-o-r-i-t-e religious, Sr. Carol Keehan!

The new White House plan drew immediate support from Sister Carol Keehan, the head of the Catholic Health organization, who said that the “accommodation” by the White House “has responded to the issues we identified that needed to be fixed.” Sister Keehan–who had been an influential supporter of the Obama administration’s health-care plans, breaking publicly with the US bishops to urge passage of the legislation—had been briefed in advance by the White House about the new plan, and was ready to offer a public statement that was interpreted by many reporters as an indication that Catholics would support the new plan.

Tellingly, pro-abortion groups such as Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America also threw their support behind the revised plan.

How often does Sr. Keehan wind up on the same side as Planned Barrenhood and other barbarous pro-aborts, and opposed to the sensus fidei of the vast majority of faithful Catholics? Sadly, lots.

We’ll see what the bishops do, but I pray she winds up being opposed to them, as well. I will pray for her conversion, but as it says in the Book of Jude, some folks are just too far gone to change.

You have more political clout, that “thing” you have wanted more than anything in the whole wide world!, than you’ve had in ages. You’ve taken a bold (if incomplete) stand, you’ve energized the laity, you’ve gotten people involved…..don’t blow it. Don’t accept an empty compromise that changes nothing. Don’t believe the hype. I’m very much with Phil Lawler on this:

The last few weeks have been exhilarating. The US bishops– nearly all of them!– have shown willingness to do political battle on a matter of principle. We’ve heard lots of brave promises, lots of line-in-the-sand rhetoric, lots of vows that Catholics will not accept the unacceptable.

But now the White House offers a palpably inadequate “compromise”–a blatant attempt to defuse criticism without addressing the substance of the problem–and the first response from the US bishops’ conference is that this is “a first step in the right direction.”

No, it’s not! It’s not a step in any direction at all. It’s a gesture–and an empty gesture at that.

In recent days our bishops have rallied their troops for battle, more effectively than on any other occasion in my lifetime. The cause is just, the time is ripe, the people are ready, the lines have been drawn. Effective leaders seize such opportunities, and use them to change history. But let’s be honest. At times like this ineffective leaders fumble away their opportunities, with devastating results for their causes.

So which will it be?

Please, please reassure me that the US bishops’ conference won’t accept a phony “compromise” and leave their loyal Catholic followers in the lurch yet again.

I’m not sanguine on the prospects. The initial response was tepid and weak – they miss their lunches on K Street already?

…….I had no idea Rick Santorum was coming to down. I guess I need to get out of my Catholic bubble! But a friend of mine did know, and took some wonderful pics. I recognize a few faces in these photos. It appears some Catholics in the area do like this guy:

Yes, Santorum has his problems, he’s far from the ideal candidate, but he’s the only Catholic in the race with a shot at winning.

Since I have friends in the pics and don’t want to start a fight, I’m going to turn the comments off.

For whatever reason, I don’t make it by Fr. Z’s site much anymore, but he had a dandy post recently with some excerpts from a speech given by Venerable Pope Pius XII to the North American College in Rome in 1953. What a glorious vision of the priesthood! Oh, that all men with such a mighty vocation would drink in deeply these words and do their utmost to realize the vision the Holy Father proclaimed! My comments in bold red:

[The completion of the North American College] lights a stronger flame of hope for the Church in the United States of America and in the world. All this, it seemed to Us, adds up to a grave and sacred responsibility that rests on you, Our dear young seminarians, and on those who are to follow you. Will the sacrifices cheerfully offered for your sake be repaid in kind and with interest? Will the hopes and plans cherished by your Bishops, cherished by Us, be fulfilled? Your eager hearts are quick to answer: yes. But reflect a moment. That will be true only under one condition, that you become priests worthy of the name.

In the priesthood man is elevated to an almost staggering height, a mediator between a world in travail and the celestial kingdom of peace. Christ’s ambassador, steward of God’s mysteries, he exercises a divine power. [A divine power……so true. It is not clericalism to hold the office of the priesthood in the very highest esteem, to recognize their UNIQUE ability to re-present the once for all time Sacrifice on Calvary and provide the Blessed Sacrament, the very sustenance of our souls, to the faithful. I pray so fervently that all priests would always have foremost in their minds this awesome power – and responsibility] Heir to the priestly and kingly offices of the divine Redeemer, he is commissioned to carry on the task of salvation, bringing souls to God and giving God to souls. [You. Give. God. To. Souls.] Never, then, unmindful of the supreme importance of such a vocation, the priest will not busy himself with useless things. Modeling his life on that of Him he represents he will gladly spend and be spent on behalf of souls. Souls he seeks everywhere and always, not what the world can offer him. «To be a priest and to be a man dedicated to work is one and the same thing», wrote Bl. Pius X; and he liked to quote the words of the synod presided over by St. Charles Borromeo: «let every cleric repeat again and again: he has been called not to a life of ease and leisure, but to hard work in the spiritual army of the Church».

Those words, beloved sons, recall another fact one dare not forget. We belong to the Church militant ; and she is militant because on earth the powers of darkness are ever restless to encompass her destruction. Not only in the far-off centuries of the early Church, but down through the ages and in this our day, the enemies of God and Christian civilization make bold to attack the Creator’s supreme dominion and sacrosanct human rights. No rank of the clergy is spared ; and the faithful—their number is legion—inspired by the valiant endurance of their shepherds and fathers in Christ, stand firm, ready to suffer and die, as the martyrs of old, for the one true Faith taught by Jesus Christ. Into that militia you seek to be admitted as leaders.

Imprisonment and martyrdom, We know, do not loom on the horizon that spreads before your eyes. [Much has changed in 60 years. Today’s priests ought to keep in the back of their mind the possibility of persecution and white martyrdom] In an atmosphere of untrammeled freedom, where «the word of God is not bound», the Church in your country has grown in numbers, in influence, in strength of leadership in all that makes for the good of the commonwealth.[Yes, much has changed, dramatically and for the worse] The college on the via dell’Umiltà has seen your priests increase from twenty-fìve hundred to forty-fìve thousand and more-proud and glorious tribute to the unselfìsh, clear-visioned Catholic family life that prevails among you; a mission country become a seminary of apostles for foreign fìelds. But the Church militant is «one body, with one Spirit … with the same Lord, the same faith, the same baptism».(Eph 4, 4 ff.) And that Spirit calls for more than a dash of heroism in every priest who would be worthy of the name, whatever the external circumstances of time and place.

The spirit of the martyrs breathes in every priestly soul, who in the daily round of pastoral duties and in his cheerful, unrelenting efforts to increase in wisdom and in grace, gives witness to the Prince of shepherds, who endured the cross, despised the shame «when He gave Himself up on our behalf, a sacrifice breathing out fragrance as He offered it to God». (Eph 5, 2.)

We raise a fervent prayer to Mary Immaculate, under whose patronage you have placed your country, to Mary gloriously assumed into heaven, whom you have wished to honour in your chapel here, that she would always show a mother’s loving care of the clergy of America, and guide you, beloved seminarians, bearers of such high hopes, along the way that leads to that holiness which will bring her to recognize in you a greater and greater resemblance to her own divine Son.

I’ve been reading a great deal about the protestant revolt. The prime reason for the revolt was a large number of unfaithful and unqualified priests and bishops, who lived lives of sin and indulgence and who neglected their priestly duties. We have a crisis in the Church now, a crisis as grave as that cleaving of Christendom 500 years ago. Let us pray that our priests will adhere to the vision of Venerable Pope Pius XII, and not any illusory spirits or siren songs of embracing the world, the flesh, and the devil.